


untitled

by godcheekbones



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Pidge Angst specifically, Pidge-Centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-01
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-11-07 18:23:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11064600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/godcheekbones/pseuds/godcheekbones
Summary: There could not be a grander funeral for a royalty, yet alone a Paladin of Voltron who was inducted barely a year ago. Flags flew at half-mast on seventy-eight planets and in three hundred and twelve individual colonies.The flags were all green.





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There could not be a grander funeral for a royalty, yet alone a Paladin of Voltron who was inducted barely a year ago. Flags flew at half-mast on seventy-eight planets and in three hundred and twelve individual colonies.                                                         

The flags were all green.

Pidge balanced precariously on her perch on top of a flag role, hands deep in the front pockets of her green and white shirt.

“Get down from there.”

Looking down – vertigo was _nothing_ anymore, not even for Hunk – Pidge gave Lance a two-fingered salute. Without ado, she stuck out her leg… and hurtled down.

Shiro spun around, hearing the delirious laughter, just in time to see Pidge land squarely on her feet.

“Pidge, _please_ stop doing that,” Hunk said, wiping his face with his hand.

Her glasses flashed in the artificial light from the castle that flooded the grassy field.

“I don’t hurt,” Pidge said automatically. They were quickly becoming the only three words that calmed Hunk with that immediate of an effect.

“Not the point,” Keith gritted out, pulling out and chucking his helmet onto the ground.

“I didn’t thank you for digging the hole in the ground, did I?” Pidge wondered aloud, and if Keith did not look murderous before, he did then.

Lance dropped to a seat next to Keith, on a fallen tree trunk. Absent-mindedly, he put a hand on Keith’s lower back and exhaled his feelings. “Just checking, you’re all seeing Pidge too, right?” Lance said eventually, filling in the silence, “Eventhough we just buried the body?”

As one, they flinched visibly, including Pidge.

“Look, I’m just as confused as you are,” Pidge shot back, before turning her back on Lance and mumbling.

“Did you say something?” Lance squinted in her direction. He turned to Keith. “Did she say something?”

Keith lifted his head tiredly. “I quote, ‘One possible theory is that we picked up the wrong body’.”

“But… the green armour,” Hunk pointed out.

It was the only thing they had left to identify the body.

Shiro spoke up for the first time. “Death is death, even in space,” he said, almost to himself, although all it did was remind them that Shiro had been in prison encampment longer than they had been together as Voltron.

Lance snorted. “It’s not like we’ll solve the mystery of afterlife with a drop-out, an engineer and a pilot,” he said, gesturing respectively, and then he paused. “Wow, that almost sounded like the beginning of a crappy walks into a bar joke.”

“We’re not thinking straight,” Shiro said, just as Keith vehemently kicked Lance in the shin. “Let’s reconvene in the morning.”

Hunk squared his shoulders and looked at the ghost in the eye. “Pidge, if you’re going to, uh, move on. Or something. Tell us first?”

All four Paladins turned to her at the same time, with varying expressions on their faces. Despite his words, Lance was already clutching Keith’s hand so hard that his knuckles were white. Shiro’s jaw was set hard, and Hunk was a millimetre away from turning on the faucet to full-on tears.

There was a pang of sadness in Pidge’s chest.

“Of course I will,” Pidge huffed, attempting to sum up indignation. It came out sounding wobbly.

Shiro nodded tightly. He turned, to walk back to the castle, when Pidge piped up, “Take care of Matt for me.”

His shoulders tensed. Pidge held her breath. Without understanding it, she was not allowed out of the battlegrounds, not even to her Lion, or into the castle, or to wait by her brother’s side as he did his time in the healing pod.

Pidge had died to rescue Matt. _Somebody_ needed to make sure that Matt stayed alive.

Lance clapped Pidge on the shoulder as he walked past, scattering her thoughts. “Of course we will,” he said seriously, repeating her words.

“What do you take us for?” Keith added, completely unnecessarily, and Pidge laughed at that. Spending time around Lance was rubbing off him.

Hunk squeezed Pidge into a hug, as if that was the last thing he would ever do. Pidge swore she heard sniffles, but Hunk had already jogged ahead to catch up with the rest.

Pidge stared at their silhouettes.

“I’ll be here,” she whispered, and let the wind snatch away her words. Her knees collapsed and she was back on the blood-soaked ground. _Her_ spilled blood.

Pidge had lied. She instinctively knew that she was sticking around only temporarily, just until she saw Matt again. Properly. Not sick with fever and coughing up blood _and_ still swinging around his stick to kill the Galra that had hurled a grenade point-blank into Pidge’s face.

It hurt like _quiznak_ for that nano-second.

No, _no_.

Pidge shook her head, willing herself to forget.

Tomorrow, eh. She could wait until tomorrow. The night sky was clear and she could count the stars, all billion and one of them, to tell Matt about when he woke up.


End file.
